“The Same Reasonable-Sounding Lies”: What Won’t The GOP Do To Keep The Poor Uninsured?
When it comes to healthcare, Southwest Virginia is a desperate place. Many of the state’s poorest and sickest live in that pocket of coal country between US Route 19 and the Kentucky and Tennessee borders, where it’s so hard to see a doctor that a free mobile health clinic held each July at a county fairground draws hundreds. “Southwest Virginia is one of the worst places we go to,” said Stan Brock, the founder and president of Remote Area Medical, which runs that clinic and others throughout the country.
That corner of Virginia also encompasses the district of Phillip Puckett, who served as a Democratic state senator until Monday, when he suddenly resigned. His decision to step down appears to have been the result of a bribe offered by Republican colleagues bent on stopping the expansion of Medicaid. Puckett’s resignation gave Republicans the one seat they needed to take control of the Senate; it also put him in the running for a paid post on a state tobacco commission that is controlled by some of the very same Republicans. And it cleared the way for the chamber to appoint his daughter to a state judgeship.
By stepping down, Puckett effectively ended a months-long battle over the fate of the 400,000 Virginians who are too poor to buy insurance but don’t meet the state’s restrictive eligibility requirements for Medicaid. The state Senate had been on course to vote to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act, setting up a budget showdown with the Republican-controlled House. But with the GOP now in control of the Senate, both chambers are expected to pass a spending plan on Thursday that does not include the expansion.
The advocacy group ProgressVA called for an investigation of allegations of a quid pro quo between Puckett and Republicans, who deny they made any sort of deal. Puckett cited “recent issues that have developed in our family” as grounds for his resignation, and said he would withdraw his name from consideration for the job on the tobacco commission. Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring announced that he does not see an “investigative role” for his office.
The question of what prompted Puckett’s mid-term resignation is tantalizing, and potentially important, but it’s also beside the point. The true scandal is that hundreds of thousands of Virginians—including more than 20,000 of Puckett’s own constituents—will be denied health insurance.
The Medicaid showdown in Virginia was particularly heated because the legislature was so closely split. But Republicans all across the country have gone to insane lengths to keep millions uninsured, or to justify doing so. In Louisiana, for example, the state sued MoveOn.org for a billboard criticizing Governor Bobby Jindal’s opposition to the Medicaid expansion. Republicans in Utah are trying to embed work requirements into a private alternative to the expansion, a stipulation that would likely make the plan unworkable. In Arkansas, Republicans tried to roll back the Medicaid alternative that passed last year by refusing to reauthorize its funding. Although the program was finally re-approved, conservative lawmakers—who are steadily gaining ground in the Arkansas legislature—indicated that they’ll attack it again next year.
For years now Republicans have trotted out the same reasonable-sounding lies to fight the expansion, namely the myth that states can’t afford it. The real callousness that undergirds their ideological campaign was made clear this year, however, by a handful of state senators in Missouri, who gathered on the Senate floor to make it clear that there would be “no path” forward for the expansion. “Why is this somehow our problem?” one lawmaker asked. “It’s not happening,” said another. “Go find something else to do.”
There simply isn’t anything else that the millions of Americans who fall into the coverage gap can do to afford healthcare. Expanding Medicaid won’t fix all of the health problems in Southwest Virginia; a shortage of providers serving rural and low-income patients also challenges the region. But that’s no reason to deny insurance to people, particularly when the costs of doing so will be born almost entirely by the federal government, not the state. The persistence of myriad other issues to be dealt with is simply an indicator that people would be better served if lawmakers spent less time devising elaborate schemes to keep the poor uninsured and found something else to do, themselves.
By: Zoe Carpenter, The Nation, June 10, 2014
“Red Flags In His Closet”: Jindal Repudiates His Communist Past
The shamelessness of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is not a topic I have arbitrarily chosen to emphasize at this blog. It’s just that the man provides so many fresh outrages so often.
It’s old news by now that in the course of this year’s Louisiana legislative session, Jindal has flip-flopped entirely on the Common Core education initiative that he and his state once championed. But rather than quietly checking a box on the subject for his vetting by conservative activists once he formally launches his 2016 presidential campaign, Bobby’s now howling at the moon, per this report from the Times-Pic‘s Julia O’Donoghue:
After weeks of ratcheting up the anti-Common Core rhetoric, Gov. Bobby Jindal issued some of his most blistering remarks on the academic standards yet Wednesday night (May 21).
“We support higher standards and rigor in the classroom, but every day, concern among parents is growing over Common Core. The feds are taking over and rushing this. Let’s face it: centralized planning didn’t work in Russia, it’s not working with our health care system and it won’t work in education. Education is best left to local control,” said Jindal through a written statement.
Russia? Russia?
This is so over the top that even Louisiana Republicans who have long supported Jindal are protesting, like his staunch ally as head of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, Chas Roemer:
Common Core backers say Jindal’s remarks about the academic standards have become more about national politics than local education policy. The governor is expected to launch a 2016 presidential campaign and he has his eye on Iowa caucus goers more than Louisiana citizens, said Chas Roemer, president of state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
“This is presidential politics,” said Roemer, a Common Core supporter, about the governor’s statement. “This is the politics of our governor, who is running for president.”
Jindal was a Common Core backer as recently as a year ago. Louisiana became one of over 40 states to officially adopt Common Core back in 2010. The academic benchmarks were developed through a collaboration of governors and education officials from states across the country, including Jindal.
So if Common Core is indeed part of a commie plot, Jindal has some red flags in his own closet, along with an exorcism.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 23, 2014
“Jindal Checks The Falwell Box”: In A Desperate Search For A “Base”
I don’t know how I missed the fact that Bobby Jindal was doing the commencement address at Liberty University on Saturday. Perhaps the Lord wanted me to have a peaceful weekend and not think about the Louisiana governor up there in Lynchburg pandering his heart out and checking the Falwell box in his desperate search for a “base” from which to run for president in 2016. Most of his remarks sound about as generic as you can get, in the Times-Pic‘s account of it:
“Today the American people, whether they know it or not, are mired in a silent war. … It is a war — a silent war — against religious liberty,” said Jindal, who spent much of the speech attacking President Barack Obama and the federal government.
This is the same rap he delivered at the Ronald Reagan Library back in February, and the only real enhancement is that he’s lucked into having an actual constituent, Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson, he can tout as the latest “victim” of politically-correct hordes of Jesus-hating sodomites. And so he has made his Christian Right persona the last of many reinventions he has pursued in his career, one that has the advantage of not relying on his record in Louisiana, where at the end of next year he’s leaving office after two full terms as governor not terribly popular with people in either party.
Indeed, he leaped effortlessly from talking about Phil Robertson to talking about Liberty’s pop-culture martyrs:
“You may think that I was defending the Robertsons simply because I am the Governor of their home state, the great state of Louisiana. You would be wrong about that. I defended them because they have every right to speak their minds,” Jindal said.
The governor then went on to say he supports David and Jason Benham, Liberty University graduates who recently lost an opportunity to have their own television show on HGTV after making controversial remarks about homosexuality and abortion.
So what distinguishes Bobby from all the other conservative pols making the holy pilgrimage to Lynchburg to offer themselves as field marshals in the spiritual warfare against godless secularists? Well, he’s got his conversion experience from Hinduism to Christianity, which he talked a lot about at Liberty, and will talk about in the future, so shameless and ruthless is his exploitation of anything in his own life that will help his candidacy. Trouble is, Bobby converted to Catholicism, not to the conservative evangelical Christianity of Jerry Falwell. I supposed he could have told the audience at Liberty this was a youthful indiscretion based on the likelihood that he would someday seek his fortune in Catholic-heavy Louisiana. But instead he’s describing himself as an “evangelical Catholic,” which is code for “don’t mind the transubstantiation and don’t listen to the current Pope, I’m as politicized as you are!”
Jindal by all accounts got a warm welcome from a national conservative evangelical audience at Liberty, and from a separate and more select group of Christian Right leaders at a private dinner over the weekend. But you have to wonder if he’s more of a novelty and a mascot for them, someone to warm up crowds with stories of hiding in the closet to read the Bible so his idol-worshiping parents couldn’t punish him, before the real presidential candidates speak. At this point, though, if that’s the role Bobby Jindal has to play to keep getting invited to do “major speeches,” that’s fine with him. Anywhere he goes will be more congenial territory than Baton Rouge.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 13, 2014
“Faith, Family And Libido”: Louisiana’s McAllister Says He’s ‘Fallen Short’
When politicians get caught in extra-marital dalliances, there’s usually a controversy that follows a predictable trajectory. There are the allegations, followed by denials, then apologies, all wrapped up in humiliation. These messes usually last several days, if not weeks.
Rep. Vance McAllister, a Louisiana Republican who’s only been in office for about five months, truncated the lifecycle considerably yesterday, going from revelation to contrition over the course of an afternoon.
A married House Republican, who ran on a devout Christian conservative platform, apologized Monday after a video surfaced that reportedly shows him kissing an aide.
“There’s no doubt I’ve fallen short and I’m asking for forgiveness. I’m asking for forgiveness from God, my wife, my kids, my staff, and my constituents who elected me to serve,” said Rep. Vance McAllister in a statement. “Trust is something I know has to be earned.” He added, “I promise to do everything I can to earn back the trust of everyone I’ve disappointed.”
The extra-marital romance was first uncovered by a local outlet, the Ouachita Citizen, which obtained a video of McAllister kissing an aide in his district office in late December – about a month after the congressman won a special election in his Louisiana district.
The exact nature of the relationship is unclear, but it’s worth noting that the aide was reportedly removed from the congressman’s payroll “during the past 24 hours.”
Complicating matters a little more, it appears the aide and her husband were generous McAllister campaign contributors.
As a general rule, I tend to believe these incidents are private matters, but the standards for scrutiny change when hypocrisy is involved.
For example, when Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) was caught hiring prostitutes, the political problem had less to do with his behavior and more to do with the fact that Vitter ran as a “family values” conservative, urging voters to elect him in part so he could champion traditional morality.
Personal mistakes are one thing; hypocrisy is something else.
McAllister, a married father of five, has a similar problem: “McAllister cited his faith, family and hard work in ads run during the campaign last year. His wife and kids were featured prominently in the ads as well.”
On his campaign issues page, the Republican puts “Faith and Family” on top, touting his family’s membership in a local Baptist church, and citing his values as an explanation for why he “opposes President Obama’s policies of bigger government.”
Looking ahead, the congressman will reportedly seek re-election. In the interim, it’s unclear if McAllister’s personal missteps will run afoul of the House GOP leadership’s “zero tolerance” policy on lawmakers and ethical lapses.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 8, 2014
“The Real Cost Of Republican Cruelty”: Voters Should Know Who’s Holding Up Their Health Care
With one week remaining before the March 31 deadline for health coverage this year, a Republican filing a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act has become a familiar, if tiresome, sight.
But Republicans filing a lawsuit against the law on the grounds of copyright infringement? That’s something new.
Yet that is effectively what happened this month in Louisiana. On March 14, the state’s lieutenant governor sued the progressive group MoveOn.org over a billboard criticizing Gov. Bobby Jindal’s refusal to expand Medicaid in the state. The billboard uses Louisiana’s tourism slogan — “Pick Your Passion!” — and adds: “But hope you don’t lose your health. Gov. Jindal’s denying Medicaid to 242,000 people.” The lawsuit claims that the MoveOn ad will “result in substantial and irreparable harm, injury, and damages” to the Louisiana tourism office — as if denying health insurance to the neediest will not cause the state “substantial and irreparable harm.”
Legal experts say Jindal’s ploy has no chance of succeeding, thanks to the First Amendment. (This would be the same First Amendment that the governor passionately invoked in defense of “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson’s right to spew racist and homophobic vitriol.)
Jindal’s reason for refusing to expand Medicaid is as specious as his reason for suing MoveOn. He claims, falsely, that the expansion would divert funds that now go to disabled individuals under traditional Medicaid. In reality, the health-care law doesn’t harm the existing program. It creates several programs to improve care for the disabled receiving Medicaid; Jindal enrolled Louisiana in three of them. But this hasn’t stopped him from blaming the ACA for his own bad policies, including cuts he made to state Medicaid funding for pregnant women.
Louisiana isn’t the only state where Republicans are preventing thousands of low-income Americans from receiving health care. In Virginia, where state lawmakers refuse to expand Medicaid, hospitals will face higher costs and reduced services as a result. One million Texans will be denied access to coverage if the state continues to reject the Medicaid expansion. Meanwhile, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant is willing to leave 300,000 of his neediest citizens uninsured. His reasoning? He’s afraid that the law might be repealed, leaving his state no way to meet its commitments — an ironic stance for a Republican to take, since they’re the ones trying to repeal it!
The 19 states that are refusing to expand Medicaid aren’t just leaving low-income Americans out to dry — they’re also leaving billions of health-care dollars on the table. While Bobby Jindal busies himself over a billboard, his state’s internal analysis found that Medicaid expansion would save Louisiana as much as $134 million in 2015 alone.
The real cost of Republican cruelty, however, cannot be measured in dollars and cents, but in people’s lives. Researchers at Harvard and the City University of New York concluded that without the Medicaid expansion, individuals will go without checkups, cancer screenings and treatment for diseases such as diabetes and depression — leading to thousands of premature and preventable deaths.
So much for compassionate or fiscal conservatism.
Amid the misinformation and fear-mongering, however, lies a real opportunity for Democrats to increase support for the ACA and win more races in November.
Consider the recent special election in Florida’s 13th Congressional District, where Republican David Jolly’s victory is being widely interpreted as a rebuke of the Affordable Care Act. Polls suggest that it wasn’t Obamacare that hurt Democrat Alex Sink but the same factor that often hurts Democrats in midterm elections: low turnout.
To combat this, what if Democrats organized a clear, concerted effort to demonstrate how Republicans are denying millions of Americans access to health insurance?
There are already signs that raising awareness is working. The Moral Monday movement, which favors expanding Medicaid, has been getting attention for its protests at public meetings in several southern states. Other states are considering following the lead of New Hampshire, where the state Senate voted, with Republican support, for a modified expansion.
At the same time, progressives should back MoveOn’s brilliant billboard campaign parodying the tourism slogans of not just Louisiana but also Texas, Florida, Nebraska, Virginia and Wisconsin — which are all blocking the Medicaid expansion.
The campaign might consider going to South Dakota, Alaska, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi and Maine, which have Republican governors, contested Senate races and huge numbers of residents who are being denied access to health care. They need to know who is at fault.
High-profile Democrats running for federal office this cycle should be similarly bold. Voters, especially low-income voters who are most hurt by the GOP’s cruel stance on health care, need to understand just what’s at stake. It’s time for Democrats to run on health-care reform, not away from it — and Medicaid expansion is a worthy place to start. If they need to know how far Republicans have gone to prevent it, there’s a billboard along Interstate 10 in Louisiana that’s a pretty good guide.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 25, 2014
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